
4 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


Ay 

LAURA '^DAINTREY, 


AUTHOR OF 

“ Miss Varian of New York/’ “ Eros/' Fedor/* 

“ ACTiEON/’ AND “ GoLD/' 



NE W Y( 

G. Dillingham^ Publisher, 

Successor to G. W. Carleton & Co. 

MDCCCXCIII, 




Copyright, 1893, 

By LAURA DAINTREY. 
[All Rights Reserved,] 


TO 

DICK AND ROSIE, NELL AND EDITH, 

IN MEMORY OF HAPPY HOURS 
WITH THEM. 




CONTENTS, 


Page 

Prelude. — The Immortal Thief. 9 

The Fool of Faith 15 

Two -G ods 18 

O Life ! O Love ! O Death ! 23 

The Guerdon of Love ; . . . 26 

Strephon ; . . . . 30 

Campaspe.‘ 33 

The Chimera 37 

Amaranth. * . . 42 

Love's Metamorphosis 46 

At Eros’ Feet 50 

Philemon 53 

Thanatos 56 

Through All Eternity 62 

The Answer of Sallust 66 


v 5 il CONTENTS. 

Page 

Felicitas 70 

The Power of Pain 75 

The Wager of Jove 76 

Love’s Choice 80 

How Woman Loves 85 

Wisdom or Happiness 91 

By Eros* Grace 96 

The Enigma of Love 98 

Love's Thorny Rose 102 

Daphne 108 

The Lessons of Love 113 

Love’s Omnipotence 118 

Calista 122 

The Riddle of the World 127 

Inexorable Change 133 

Love the Coward 137 

Love the Brave 142 

The Banquet of Love 146 


The Arrows of Love. 


♦♦♦ 

PRELUDE. 

THE IMMORTAL THIEF. 

“ Mother/' said Eros, slender and tall 
before Venus, lend me your girdle. There 
is a mortal maiden I long to beguile with all 
its charms." 

“ Take it," said Aphrodite, dallying with 
the helmless hair of Mars. 

“ Jove, let me borrow thy thunder-bolts, 

[9] 


10 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


and be as terrible as thou for this one day — ** 
But the Father of Gods, his bolts abandoned, 
wild with love, was rained, a shower of gold, 
on Danae. 

“ Apollo, lend me your lyre, the hundred- 
chorded lyre, that my love-words may be 
all-divine as music — But the lyre stood 
forgotten, for the god had seen the fair boy 
Hyacinth go by. 

** Diana, lend me your royal bow and 
argent arrows,*’ coaxed the Love God. And 
the Huntress forgot them as Selene’s heaven- 
ly eyes beheld Endymion’s sleep. 

“ Mercury, lend me the wings at your 
ankles, swifter than light,” Eros pleaded. 

‘‘You will return them?” the cunning 
Mart God answered, difficult to blandish and 
to blind. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


11 


“Bacchus, your thyrsus? Lend it for an 
hour — But the Wine God saw sweet 
Ariadne weeping, and was gone. 

“ Lend me your treasures, Plutus ; 'tis a 
jest. ...” 

“ But you must pay interest on them, 
Eros.” 

“ All that you like. — Queen Juno, lend 
me your imperially !” And even then, to 
Heaven’s scandal, her imperially was turned 
into the soft disguise of love. 

“ Pluto, the lordship of Styx and Phle- 
gethon : a whim of mine until to-morrow ! — 
Proteus, your magic power of mutation ! — 
Neptune, the ocean’s changes for a day ! — 
Minerva, I implore you, wisdom — but for 
sport, in jest, to play with for an hour !” 

“ Out on you, madcap, laden down with 


12 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


spoils ! An hour ! Why, wisdom is forever. 
Out of my sight ! Could I but turn you to a 
plodding spider, like Arachne !” 

The long day of the blest immortals 
passed ; the ambrosial supper tempted in 
Jove's hall. Eros had not returned, and 
Ganymede (as Mercury was lame) was sent 
to find him. The boy came back to great 
Jove's knees, a-tremble. 

He has sent the sons of man all mad ! 
They say he makes them blind with charms 
he scatters. Mars is not half so feared — " 

He must have filched his terrors while 
he slept !" cried Venus. 

“The bolts of Jove are not stronger than 
a fillip of his finger — " 

“ By my beard !" roared Jove. 

“ Apollo's music breathes when he but 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


13 


whispers, music divine, half Heaven's joy. 
And yet he hunts poor Man with bow and 
arrows potent as Diana’s — ” 

‘‘ Yes, for they are mine !” 

1 ** Wings at his feet, he flies faster, when 
he’s tired, than a hundred Mercurys — ” 

‘‘ Slave, you shall die for that !” the Mart 
God shouted. He has stolen them — from 
me, the God of Thieves !” 

“ Protect me, Jove ! — They say he makes 
them sweetly drunk as ever Bacchus did.” 

‘‘ My thyrsus ! Silenus, where — ” 

“He seems more precious than all Plutus* 
treasures to the heart — ” 

“ Hear, Jove ! he’s robbed me ! He swore 
he’d pay me interest — ” 

“ On your own credulity. — What more 
“ He ^asts a bright imperialty like Juno’s 


14 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


over those whom he would make beloved. 
Those whom he abandons or derides drown 
in despondent Styx or flaming Phlegethon. 
Proteus and broad Ocean cannot change so 
fast as he, from sweet to bitter and from sad 
to gay. Yet, wisdom lacks, he sends the whole 
world mad — 

‘‘ He tried to pilfer — wretch ! — but could 
not. Wisdom is for the wise, and he was 
ever jester of all Heaven !'* 

Night was dark on earth, and Man gone 
mad. Before the feet of Eros Psyche bowed, 
like a rose before the sweet south wind. 

Midday ^ May 7, 1893. 

5 . 5 . Berlin^ one day off New York. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


16 


THE FOOL OF FAITH. 

“ Why would you snap my strings and 
shatter my frame ?*' wailed his lute to the 
lover. Have I not always responded truly ? 
Have I not blended my chords with your 
voice till we made the loved one goddess in a 
heaven of sound ? Have I not been always 
faithful ?” 

The lover dropped his hand and bowed 
his head. 

‘‘ Yes, my lute, you have been faithful.*' 

“Why," cried the loved one’s portrait to 
the lover, “ why would you overthrow me ? 
Do I not feign her very eyes and lips, her 
hair, her beautiful bosom ? Has not my 


16 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


reflection of her everything but life ? Am 
I not also faithful ?’* 

“ Yes,” said the lover, refraining and 
sighing, yes, you also are faithful,” 

‘‘ Stay !” the heart of the lover implored 
him. I am the faithfullest of all ! Have I 
not sung her as no lute could sing? Have I 
not praised her beyond painted praise of 
beauty ? Have I not loved her through the 
year’s four seasons, making them one summer 
night of love ? Stay ! Spare me as you have 
spared the lute — the portrait ! I am the faith- 
fullest of all !” 

The lover aimed the dagger he was hold- 
ing in his hand. 

“Yes,” he said, “my heart, you are the 
faithfullest of all. I spared the lute and the 
portrait because my lady still loves her 


tflE ABBOWS OE LOVE. 


17 


hymned and painted praise : but you I will 
not spare, for you, most faithful fool, have 
lost her love !*' 

The Canaries, Bedford Park, London. 

September 23, 1889. 


18 


THE ARROWS OF LOVij. 


TWO GODS. 

The lover had been repulsed : he was 
angry and sad. 

‘‘ Love is but mortal, like his votaries,” 
he cried. I will be rid of him ! Fickle, 
double, fleeting: what attributes divine! I 
go to bow before Apollo.” 

The artist who had been a lover never 
ceased to rail at love : “ Eros, the perverse, 

the unabiding.” He praised Apollo and 
abused the son of Venus till the rumor of it 
reached even Olympus. 

“Where does perfidious Eros feed his 
flame? On the fuel of weak wits, sick hearts, 
wild fantasies : upon the mortal grovelling 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


19 


human race. No wonder it is always too 
fierce or else too calm, too constant or too 
fickle ! No wonder that there never were 
two loves matched well enough to blend in 
lasting concord ! My master's torch is fed 
on truth and beauty, eternal purities, and 
burns undying." 

And, driving off love’s memories, he 
worked. 

“ What is the little mocking boy’s delight ? 
To see men made as drunk with love alone 
as moths are made with light and flies with 
wine. To see them burn and drown them- 
selves in love. To see the grandsire, brave 
with cap and bells, set capering like his 
grandson. Ah ! the great god I serve gives 
power and peace. 

“ (I hope I may enjoy them in the future !) 


20 


THE ARROWS OR love. 


“ What are the infernal trophies EroS 
loves ? Vows unredeemed and pledges 
broken, trust thrice-betrayed, pale corpses of 
dead hopes, lovers made mockers, deceivers 
mutual dupes, satiety’s dull eyes that meet 
still-eager eyes of passion — 

“ Alas I” groaned the ex-lover, ‘‘what a 
fell disease is love, no matter how ephemeral ! 
Ah, let me labor ! I escape its mortal curse 
in the worship of art’s immortality !” 

When the artist-lover ceased his ardent 
toil, and drew back, as the red sun set, to 
view his picture, he found there, not the 
dream-face he had sought to limn, but the face 
of his lost lady. 

He changed the brush for the chisel. 

“ Enduring marble is a stronger prayer.” 

One day he liad completed an Adonis, 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


21 


whose beauty proved him master of the stone. 
In the youth’s face he had sculptured seemed 
the face of his beloved. 

He changed the chisel for the stylus. 

My strophes of fire will prevail.” 

When his songs were on the lips of all his 
nation, it was said : ** Hear how he hymns 
his fickle love !” 

The lover cried to cold Apollo. 

** I madden ! Give me rest !” 

There was no other prayer to proffer, 
laborious and fair. The god was mute. 

But Eros stood before the poet-lover. 

“ Listen,” soft and smilingly he said. 

Know that I am mortal and immortal, 
pleasure and pain, feebleness and strength. 
It is through these paradoxes that I reign, 
through them that I touch all creation ! To 


22 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


subdue you I have, through you, with a 
wanton whim of mine shared Apollo’s 
immortality. See where those pigments feign 
the fairness of her flesh ! See the strong 
stone where it has softened to her face ! See 
where in subtle cycles of sound, in strophes of 
fire, you sing her fame ! Apollo is divine, but 
not the greatest god in heaven : he can evoke 
but not destroy. I can both create and kill ; 
I, after fettering, can free. Abjure Apollo 
and acknowledge Eros ! I gave you pain : 
you shall know peace.” 

At the feet of the vision of the god the 
lover grovelled, and worshipped, laughing 
gladly. 

He was mad. 


The Canaries, September 24, 1889. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


23 


O LIFE ! O LOVE ! O DEATH ! 

The lover had faithfully served and faith- 
fully waited, but his love, when he asked her 
for hope, laughed mockingly. 

“ Then I am not beloved ?’* groaned the 
wretched lover. 

Loved ? Beloved ?’* mocked the lady, and 
laughed again. 

He left her : he thought of his faithful 
devotion and service ; he thought of the 
beautiful scentless flowers of hope which had 
bloomed, flowers now fading and never made 
perfect with passionate perfume. 

‘‘Life,” asked the lover, “what have you I 

-4 


24 : THE AKROWS OF LOVE. 

left for me ? — what have you left for the 
unbeloved 

Life answered one word : 

‘‘ Pain.” 

“ Death,” asked the lover, what will you 
give to me ? — what do you give to the souls 
of the unhappy ?” 

Death answered one word : 

Peace.” 

‘‘ My soul shall sleep,” said the lover. My 
tired soul shall sleep. All time shall weigh 
on its eyelids, all silence shall be its tomb.” 

Hoping no longer, he no longer feared. 
He stabbed himself with his own dagger. 

** Farewell to barren Life ! to Love the 
torturer — ” 

He swooned under his pain. 

When sense returned he was dying. U 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


25 


seemed to him that he dreamed. His lady 
was kneeling beside him, laughing and 
stroking his hair. 

‘‘Do not feign,*' she smiled, “any longer. 
Our feigning is done with now. Come back 
to me : I love you ! My jest is over : cease 
yours." 

She saw the dagger's handle : its blade 
was in his flesh. She drew the steel out, 
frenzied : his heart’s blood bathed her hands. 
He was dead, with his last words spoken. 

“ O Life ! O Love ! O Death ! . . ." 

Behind them stood Eros, smiling. 

“ My lessons all have their price.” 


The Canaries t September 25, 1889. 


26 


THE ARKOVVS OF LOVE. 


THE GUERDON OF LOVE. 

One day Eros, wandering, crossed the path 
of a beautiful girl. She hastened and wept, 
unaware that the youth she passed by was 
the God of Love. 

Eros spoke in his sweet voice, detaining, 
seductive 

Why do you weep?*' 

** I weep because my beloved is dying. 
Alas !" 

And she hastened on. 

‘‘You love, then ?*’ said Eros, again arrest- 
ing her footsteps with his words. 

Could I suffer like this if I did not love V* 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


27 


And she broke away. 

“ Pause/' murmured Eros, I am the 
God of Love. What you desire most I will 
grant to you.” 

The third time she turned. 

His life !” 

‘‘ It is yours.” 

She fell at the fair feet of the god. 

Listen,” she said, while she bathed them 
with rapturous tears, ‘^gracious and omnipo- 
tent ! Mine for him is not a love of yester- 
day or of a summer. I loved before I was 
beloved. I hoped when hope lay dying. I 
dreamed of a future in whose rich realm 
lie should reign, till that realm became my 
dream of heaven. Beautiful and pitying, 
bountiful and tender, to me as to him you 
have given back life ! I go to my future, the 


28 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


future of my dream, where together we will 
adore you above all other gods !*’ 

*^Yes, you love/' said Eros, turning awa3L 
“ And I give you the guerdon of love." 

Years had elapsed when Eros, young with 
immortal beauty, passed a pale woman where 
he had left the girl. 

God of Love !" said the woman, detaining 
him as he had detained the girl. God of 
Love, we have met here before ! Do you not 
recognize 3^0111* votary ? Do 3’^ou not know 
again the fair face of the girl whose lover’s 
life you gave back to her ? Do you not see 
in mine the beautiful body of her who knelt 
to you here, of her whom 3"ou sent towards 
the future of her dream, of her who promised 
you infinite incense and worship above all 
other gods that be ?’' 


TSEi ARROWS OR LOVE. 


29 


** I remember/' answered Eros. 

‘‘ Cruel and strong, you sent me on to the 
future ; a realm wliere he reigned but not the 
realm of my dream. Beautiful and pitiless, 
bountiful of anguish, why did you stop me 
here ? You knew that either way my dream 
must be barren. Ah, even death would have 
left what you beggared me of : the thought 
that it might have been !" 

“ Woman," said Eros, “ I gave you what 
you had chosen. I told you then that my 
gift was the guerdon of love." 

The Canaries, September 26, 1889. 


30 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


STREPHON. 

Three girls sat together spinning, when the 
shepherd Strephon passed. 

What a beautiful boy !” said Aglaia. 

“ He has eyes like the gods !’* said Maia. 

Egeria said : “ He has smiled to me with 
the sweetest mouth in the world !" 

‘‘To me he brings poppies and corn- 
flowers.* 

“To me he brings white lambs* fleeces.** 

“ To me he has brought a nightingale with 
the sweetest voice in the world !** 

“ They call him cold,** said Aglaia : she 
loitered over her spinning. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


31 


“Those live who can contradict it,” said 
Maia, her hands growing idle. 

“ Yes, I : he has told me he loves me !” 
Egeria’s distaff was still, 

“ I wonder whether you dreamed that, or 
read it in Ovid, or what? It is not two days 
since he begged for my heart, and stole a 
long tress of my hair !” 

“Aglaia,” said Maia, smiling, “you are 
both of you mad, I think. Last night he 
vowed love eternal to me and sealed the oath 
with a kiss.” 

“What !” cried Egeria. “ You love him !” 

“ As you do, if jealousy shows it.” 

“ And I,” said Aglaia, “ I love him because 
his heart is mine.” 

At the moment Cordelia entered. 

“ Of whom are you speaking so hotly ?” 


32 


•The AtiitoWs oi' loV£. 


Of Strephon, who loves me !” they all 
cried. 

** Of Strephon ? why, where are your 
senses ? — I want you to be my attendants 
when Strephon weds me to-day 

TAe Canaries^ September 26, 1889, 


THE AEEOWS OF LOVE. 


33 


CAMPASPE. 

When Love was a little winged rascal, 
naked and dimpled and smiling, he had a 
favorite playmate, a wingless mortal child. 
One day they were playing forfeits : she won 
his bow and his quiver, she won his arrows 
and sandals, she won his curls and his wings. 
When Love had no more to stake he said : 

“ I wager twin wishes.*' 

“I’ll win them,” laughed little Campaspe, 
“ and keep them under your wings !” 

Next morning Love won back his sandals, 
his quiver, his bow and his arrows ; he won 
back one wish of the couple, and also his curls 
and wings. 


34 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


Campaspe was grown to a maiden, admired, 
desired and beloved. She met with her play- 
mate Eros who, still winged, was now a youth. 

Campaspe,'* said Eros, mocking, do you 
see these flattering suitors ? These are my 
arrows and sandals, my bow, quiver, curls 
and wings. Campaspe, look and remember, for 
all these I won back from you, and of the 
strong twin wishes you also lost me one !’* 
And now Campaspe looked coldly on all 
her suitors, no longer amused by tormenting 
them with sweet arts. She loved, and herself 
knew the pain and the rapture of loving : 
rapture in loving, and pain, being unbeloved. 

One day the pestilence, death-winged, 
swept through the city. 

Eros !** Campaspe cried. “ My wish ! my 
wish !** 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


35 


“Well?*' said Eros, standing before her 
smiling. 

“Am I to die ?’* 

“ Unless you wish for your life.*' 

“ Eros,’* murmured Campaspe, trembling 
and blushing, “must Glaucus also, my best- 
beloved one, die ?** 

“Yes,** said Eros, “unless you, by wishing, 
should save him.** 

“ Eros, Eros, give back the other wish !’* 

The god smiled. 

“ Eros, have pity ! have mercy ! be gra- 
cious ! If I too live I may some day win his 
love !** 

“Can you not wish that his soul may de- 
part when yours does ?” 

^ But death for him — so young ! so beauti- 


ful r* 


36 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


“ But death for you — so beautiful I so 
young !’* 

Will you not listen when here at your feet 
I implore you ?’' 

‘‘Yes/* answered Eros, “I listen, but that 
is all.” 

“ Eros, I wish ! Let him live ! let me 
die . . . 

“ It is granted. See where he flies from the 
city — but not alone.” 

Campaspe with dying eyes saw a youth 
and a maiden, hand in hand, run by on 
wind-swift feet. 

The Canaries y September 26-27, 1889. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


37 


THE CHIMERA. 

“ I have loved a hundred, a thousand 
times,'" laughed Phaon, ** and forgotten as 
often. I say I defy love's power !" 

Eros laid on him a curse as he spoke. That 
day he loved again and profoundly. That 
night, standing within his chamber, he found 
a chimera, a monster not earth-born. It 
raised a face like his own towards him ; his 
own face pallid, lifeless and changeless. 

‘‘What is this — ?" appalled, muttered 
Phaon. “ Monstrous, Unnamed, Unknown, 
what are you ?’" 

It gazed at him mutely. He turned and 
fled. 


38 


THE AEROW8 OF LOVE. 


Breathless, Phaon paused in the forest, 
and, trembling, looked backward where he 
had come. The moon hung lamp-like. Be- 
hind him was no one. Beside him shone pale 
the Chimera’s face. 

Why do you follow me, Terrible, Name- 
less ? I am too spent to fly again — ” 

It broke silence, moving its dead lips 
slowly. 

“ Because I am yours and you are mine.” 

“ What ! do you love me, ten-thousand- 
fold Horror ?” 

“ I know you, Phaon, too well to love.” 

“Then — gods ! — you hate me ?” 

“ No, again, Phaon. I hold you too fast 
in my power to hate.” 

“ When will you leave me ?” 


“ Never.” 


THE A&ROWS OF LOVK. 


3d 


Never — ? What will my life be ? What 
of my love ?*' 

‘‘ Love ? You, Phaon ? you, the scoffer ?’* 
And the Chimera, unsmiling, laughed. 

Listen, Appalling, Powerful, listen ! A 
thousand times I have loved and forgotten, 
but those loves were not to me like this. 
She is pure as a flame, and by her I grow 
purer ; constant, and teaches me constancy. 
If you do not hate me and do not love me, 
pity me, leave me and let me love !’* 

“Phaon,'' said the Chimera, “you alone 
can free yourself from me. I am yours and 
you are mine : love, hate, pity, are not 
between us. Hear me. While you worship 
Love humbly, making your life the god's 
offering, while you dream of a holy passion, 
while you honor your flame-pure love, I will 


40 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


not seek you — you shall be free. But I say 
to you, Use this freedom well. If you grow 
pure through this purified passion, I may 
come, white and unknown, as a dove. If 
you misuse opportunity, freedom, I will return 
and, revealed, make you mad 

The monster vanished, and Phaon, stunned, 
stumbled home believing that he had dreamed. 

Through the autumn and winter Phaon 
worshipped, humbly, the goddess whom 
summer had sent. His supplications at last 
succeeded, and spring made his love pure as 
fire his bride. Summer and autumn and 
winter and spring, as they passed, watched 
his waning worship decrease : summer, again, 
sent a second goddess — a goddess as fierce, 
not as pure, as flame. 

One day the wife of Phaon reproached him. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


41 


The faithless husband, for answer, struck 
her. She who was constant lay dead before 
him, and over her the Chimera stood. 

** Phaon, behold, I am with you forever : 
I, the Incredible, I, the Appalling ! Am I not 
yours, Phaon, are you not mine, when I am 
your soul incarnate ?” 


TAe Canaries, September 27, 1889. 


42 


THE ARROWS OF LOYE. 


AMARANTH. 

It pleased Love and Death once to mas- 
querade as quacks selling wonderful nos- 
trums. 

“ Behold !” exclaimed Eros, the secret of 
beauty ! This potion will give you immortal 
youth 

“ O, happiness cried out a girl in the 
crowd. Look Phokis I Say what must I 
pay, learned doctor ?” 

The love of Phokis, my dear.*' 

At the same moment Death raised a clear 
crystal vial. 

“ Here is,*' said he, a more precious 
draught yet ; it is called the elixir of ease. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


43 


Who drinks this has peace, plenty, surceaSe 
from pain : no hatred can hurt him, no love 
can torment him, no hope can befool him, 
despair he defies.” 

‘‘ What is your price, great wizard ?” 
cried Phokis. 

“Amarantha's love for you,” answerea 
Death. 

The lovers looked at each other sadly, and 
up at the doctors and back again. Then, 
with fond smiling, hand clasped in kind hand, 
silent, together they turned away. 

“ Let us see,” muttered Death, which can 
punish them most. The girl 3'^ou can deal 
with : the youth is for me. — Come back, come 
back, faithful lovers ! your constancy touches 
my heart ! I have half a mind to give you 
the precious elixir you would not buy !” 


44 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


He muttered in Eros' ear and laughed. 

‘‘ I will outdo you !” smiled Eros in answer. 
“ — If Phokis will drink to his love from your 
vial, my potion shall be Amarantha’s to drink. 
Together ! I give, girl, immortal youth — my 
brother, bo)% gives you — " 
die !" 

By Phokis, dying, knelt Amarantha, imper- 
ishably fair. The gods, grown invisible, 
watched the mob's fury, the parting lovers' 
despair. 

“Admit," murmured Eros, “my thought 
was the subtlest. Look at her, clothed in 
unchangeable beauty, she who would die but 
who cannot die ! He thinks their souls will 
embrace in Elysium after the lapse of her 
mortal life ; but she through her veins feels 
immortal youth flowing, a god-like ichor. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


45 


death-undefiled i You, blunt old friend, 
would but have parted them an hour : I 
eternally divide them !’* 

Eros exulted ; Death, wrathful, strode 
off. 

They have amused me ; I will have mercy. 
I can afford it — I outwitted Death. Though 
her beauty, transmuted, remains through all 
ages, to-night in Elysium their souls shall 
embrace !” 

On Phokis' dead breast lay, instead of the 
loved one, immortal flowers of amaranth. 


T/te Canaries^ September 28, 1889. 


46 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


LOVE’S METAMORPHOSIS. 

They had loved for a year, and she found 
him already unfaithful. A rival disputed the 
reign of the Venus of Rome. 

Sup with me to-night,” said Arsinoe, 
Claudius. It is perhaps for the last time.” 

Over the banquet they lingered together : 
to both it suggested their love which, having 
enjoyed, they were about to abandon. 

Why do you say ^ for the last time,’ 
Arsinoe ?” 

‘‘Because, having known your love, my 
adored, I cannot support your indifference. 
Rome I am leaving behind me — and you ! 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


47 


You no longer can tell me that you love 

^ >> 
me — 

Claudius was silent. 

'‘Alas ! . . . And besides, my jealousy ! — 
I suffer ! Do you think I have not seen her 1 
matched her pale hair against the copper- 
glow of this ? her dove’s against my falcon’s 
eyes ? her virginal form against my own like 
Aphrodite’s t You cannot say you do not love 
her— ?” 

Claudius averted his head. 

‘‘You are right: it is better, this terrible 
candor. I go, as the sad comet sweeps 
through the skies, unmated, with dishevelled 
tresses of disaster. You, you remain : for 
you, love, the summer, fruition, rapture — for 
me, what ? . . .” 

“ Arsinoe, you are cruel ’ For you, new 


48 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


loves, fresh tributes, other triumphs ! If I 
love, can I help it ? — I loved you once — ** 

Ah ! silence .... I would say farewell 
to you here, but no. Go up to your chamber, 
Claudius : there I will see you for the last 
time ; there, where you have often dreamed 
soft dreams ....*' 

Claudius, flattered by this strong surviving 
love and soothed by the suggestion of a 
newer passion’s pleasures, left her beside the 
banquet’s sumptuous wreck. As he passed 
beyond her sight she smiled. 

The unfaithful lover threw a look about 
this chamber in whose air floated a thousand 
memories. 

** Yes, she was beautiful ; but not so beauti- 
ful as Amaryllis. Yes, seductive ; but not so 
seductive as . . . .” 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


49 


He ceased. 

The eyes of Claudius had lighted on the 
pillows of his couch. One was vacant. On 
the other lay a head, bloodless, beautiful. 
Here flowed pale hair that wrapped the 
severed neck : here stared the dove-eyes of 
dead Amaryllis. 

To his robbed passion's roar robbed pas- 
sion answered. Arsinoe stood avenged beside 
her rival. 

“ This is the work of Love turned into 
Hate !" 

She smiled across the couch to Claudius. 

The Canaries — NelVs House, Kenley, Surrey, 
September 2 <y-October 2, 1889. 


50 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


AT EROS^ FEET. 

At the feet of Eros lay a suppliant. 

Most Mighty, loving, I am unbeloved 
What would you ?*' asked the son of 
Venus. 

I would buy love, no matter what the 
price. I will pay down my soul, my life- 
blood ! What must I do to reach my idol's 
heart ?" 

Wait," said the God of Love. 

Again the suppliant kissed Eros' feet. 

‘‘ The idolized one is my husband now. 
He squanders, gambles, leaves me starving. 
Sometime3 he comes home after a night at 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


51 


play, and strikes me for having no more gold 
to give him. Look, for him I sold my long 
bright hair. But 1 adore him and would 
keep his heart. Counsel me again. Eternal 
One !” 

“ Work,'' said the God of Love. 

Once more the suppliant crouched at Eros' 
feet, and this time laved them with her tears. 

‘‘ Alas, he gives me rivals ! I suffer — he 
but laughs — " 

“Endure," said the God of Love. 

Bruised, haggard, aged, the suppliant sank 
inert before the feet of Eros. 

“ See my despair : have pity. Mightiest I I 
have waited, I have worked, I have endured, 
for love : I have given youth, health beauty, 
joy and peace, for love. I have no more, yet 
I still love him — I still crave to keep his 


52 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


heart ! What is there for me ? What 
can I do — ?” 

Die !’* said the God of Love. 

At NelVs^ near Midnight, 

October 2, 1889. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


^53 


PHILEMON. 

‘‘Alas!'* cried the old wife on her death- 
bed, “I shouldn’t mind reaching Elysium 
before him, so that I could make things to his 
liking there, as usual, but I know he will 
meanwhile find some other body to look after 
him on earth !” 

“ He shall not forget you, faithful Baucis,” 
answered Eros. “ Go in peace. Prepare 
against his coming a new home.” 

“ O, the pretty lad ! and then what pretty 
promises ! Promise one thing more : that 
he shall never love but me ?” 

“ Go in peace, good mother : be content 


64 


THtl ARROWS OR LOVE. 


with what I tell you. I promise he shall fly 
to you from all the charms of earth 

A year later old Philemon, with Eros, 
arrows smarting, gave Baucis a successor in 
her handmaid, buxom, young. 

When Phyllis became mistress, she squan- 
dered whole sestertise upon trinkets, gauds 
and jewels, on apparel and attire. 

“I would she had,’* mused Philemon, “the 
sober, inexpensive useful habit in her gar- 
ments of my late dear wife !*’ 

When Phyllis replaced Baucis, she sold her 
trusted bondsmen, she changed the household 
order, she bullied Philemon. 

“Alas !" complained the dotard, “I would 
she had the prudent peaceful amiable temper 
of my late dear wife !” 

When Phyllis was a mother she allowed her 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


55 


brats to bellow, romp and scuffle, screech, 
kick, tumble, around Philemon. 

“O Baucis!*' piped her husband, ‘‘when 
did you thus bring me children who would 
howl like wolves about me ? O my dear late 
wife !’* 

Then Phyllis began flirting : $he drew 
round her gay young gallants, and when 
Philemon remonstrated she called him 
“ Pantaloon !’* 

“ Now, gods above bear witness, I no longer 
can endure it I I will hang myself and fly to 
join my late dear wife !*’ 

At NelVSt Midday, October 3, 1889. 


56 


tflfi ARROWS OF LOVE. 


THANATOS. 

Alcides stood beside his dead love's body. 

“ Calirrhoe ! Calirrhoe ! 

** Alas, the smile that used to answer me !” 
He bruised her flesh with kisses of despair. 

Alas, the lips that used to turn to me !" 
He laid his head upon her breast's white 
calm. 

“ Alas, the heart that used to beat for me ! 
This is no longer she ! no, she is gone ! 
Calirrhoe, I follow you — I follow !" 

Alcides stood before dim Hades’ gates. 

‘‘ Calirrhoe !” he cried, Calirroe !" 

Out of the shades no answer in her voice, 
but far and near an universal moan. 


THE ARROWS OP LOVE. 


57 


** Cerberus, give way, for I will enter !" 

When the three-headed horror bared his 
fangs, Alcides, mighty in his love, subdued 
him. 

“ Calirrhoe ! Calirrhoe 

No face like hers or voice but numberless 
mute captives of the shadow thronging 
past. 

“ Where is Calirrhoe ?*' he asked of these. 

Instead of answer, from each burst a coun- 
ter-question : they asked of those whom they 
:iad left on earth. When at this myriad- 
Houthed inquiry he stood wordless, they 
jwept on, crying : 

“ What know we of her, more than you 
«now of those whom we have lost ? Ask 
Zeus ! ask Death ! ask Fate !'* 

Alcides, looking after them, heard laughter 


58 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


full of irony, that ended like a scream of 
pain. 

‘‘ Calirrlioe ! Calirrhoe !’' he groaned, 
‘‘ where are you ? Alas, I shall never rescue 
her r’ 

About him he saw stretching, like ocean’s 
floor, the sterile boundless plateaus, shadow- 
deserts, of the under-world. 

Let me cross them ! Let me seek her till 
I reach the brink of Hades, pursue her to the 
dim horizon-line, eternity !'* 

Past multitudes of phantoms, past soli- 
tudes of twilight, past pallid flowers unper- 
fumed, he persisted on his way. As he went 
he called her name, but even Echo did not 
answer. Silence densely lay upon it as it lay 
upon her life. 

He had swum a tideless river and was 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


59 


climbing up its bank, which crumbled ashy 
in his footsteps, when a shade confronted him. 

‘‘Youth, I am Rhadamanthus. How come 
you, in this mortal aspect, here among the 
shades 

“Judge incorruptible, I seek Calirrhoe. I 
have achieved the deed through love.*' 

“Youth, have done, begone. Return to 
earth and find another love. She whom you 
seek I cannot render. Those who enter here 
do not return." 

“Arbiter of both our fates, be lenient! — 
I have dared Heaven and Hell to rescue her ! 
Let me but see her — show where love 
has brought me for her sake ! Ah I you 
relent ! — " 

“Yes, he relents," said Death, standing 
beside them. “ But I do not relent." 


60 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


Alcides threw himself before the feet of 
Death. 

She is my love !’* he cried. Have pity !’' 
What do I know of love ?*' said Death. 

“ She is my life — my hope — " 

I take all life : I kill all hope/* 

“ Spare her — one from your myriads, 
Death !*' 

“ It is the little myriad flowers of earth that 
make earth's summer, boy. It is the myriad 
lives I glean, by sparing not the least, that 
make my summer." 

“ Death, you smile, you sneer : is it to try 
me ? Death, great Death, have mercy — " 

Go to Love for that." 

Then, if I cannot rescue, let me join 
her ! Let me die — my soul shall swell the 
count — " 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


61 


** Fool, would you bribe me ? Out ! away ! 
begone ! I only come to tliose who hate me. 
Hark : you have conquered all save me 
through love ; but me Love never conquers 
Alcides woke to find that he had swooned 
across his dead love’s body. 

Neirs, October 6, 1889. 


62 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


THROUGH ALL ETERNITY. 

I love you, and I am a wife 

I love you — I, your husband’s captive !” 

The Greek girl made a Roman matron wrung 
her hands. The young Barbarian, who had 
been a chief, trembled with wrath and passion. 

He will return in two or three days more. 
. . . Alas, I must prevail on him to free 
you ! He makes you my guardian and my 
slave : you attend me, follow me, obey me. 
How can this go on ? If you submit, it is to 
love, not to him : and I — the struggle is too 
fierce — oh, it will kill me ! . . . I must end 
it before. . . 

“ If we could fly — reach Gaul — ” 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


63 


‘‘ What of my hateful vows ? my hated 
duty ?’* 

“ If I were free — !” 

Hear me ! Though I never loved him, 
and my father forced me to submit, the vows 
I made are still inviolable. Nothing but 
death, his death, can free me. You, to 
humiliate, he brands a slave : but what am 
I ? — a slave tenfold abased 

A door opened silently behind them, re- 
vealing the figure of a Roman senator. 

“ If I had known how I could love, I would 
have rather died than yielded. . . . And 
now, even now, why not ? It would save my 
seeing him again — receiving on my lips his 
kiss of greeting : it would save. . . . how I 
love you ! how I love you ! I dare not stay — 
I cannot go — !'* 


64 : 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


She tottered : the Barbarian crushed her, 
almost senseless, to his breast. 

With the spring of a wolf the Roman 
reached and tore her from his hold. She fell. 
The two men, grimly mute, began to wrestle 
for each other's life above her. 

There was no sound but the shuffle of 
their feet on polished stone, and furious 
breathings. The Roman had cunning, the 
Barbarian strength. It was the duel of a lion 
and a serpent. 

Stabbed till he dyed in blood the Roman's 
toga, the Gaul at last mastered the knife. 
He had his captor by the throat and held the 
dagger over him. 

“Remember the indignities you made me 
bear. You shall die for them ! Remember 
her you won against her will. You 5haU (}!^ 


THK AUROWS OF LOVE. 


65 


for it ! Remember my love for her, her love 
for me — you, Avhom she never loved ! Yes, 
you shall die — Roman, tyrant — you, my ene- 
my, my nation's !" 

He dropped the blade and closed a mortal 
grip upon the other's throat. 

“Not by the knife. You shall die under 
my hands. ... I want to feel you die !" 

.... He flung from him a corpse whose 
bloody toga slirouded its distorted face. 

“ Prokne ! we are avenged, and free ! 
Prokne !" 

She lay where she had fallen, dead. 

“And I have sent him to her — !“ roared 
the Gaul. “ Where is the knife ? — I'll follow 
them. . . . Mine — she is mine ! . . . Yes, I 
will thwart him if I combat him through all 
eternity !” 

At Nells y October 7, 1889. 


66 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE, 


THE ANSWER OF SALLUST. 

She was very coy as a maiden : her suitors 
thought too coy ; and Sallust, of all the most 
ardent, she flattered the least of all. 

Lucina, a kiss ! Lucina !** 

But she turned her shoulder to him, and 
laughed with the lips that, tenderly trembling, 
should have welcomed his. 

“ Lucina, a length of your tresses !" 

But she caught them away perversely, and 
twined in them opening roses whose thorns 
should punish the tliief. 

‘‘ Lucina, the string of your sanda^I will 
kneel to you while I detach it — 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


67 


But she made it a silken fetter on the neck 
of a favorite dove. 

‘‘At least a kind word, Lucina 
But she called a gazelle towards her, and 
lavished upon it little sounds of love and 
caressing names. 

“Not even a smile, Lucina? — I vow I will 
seek some other, some girl who will not 
repulse me — 

Again Lucina laughed. 

A week passed before he won the smile ; a 
month before she gave him a kind word ; he 
waited a whole summer for her sandal-string, 
a winter for the long tress of her hair. But 
when Lucina surrendered the kiss, she sur- 
rendered her heart as well. 

Now Sallust possessed kind words and 
smiles as many as she could lavish ; his, too, 


68 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


were all her sandal-strings and the Pactolus 
of her hair. Her lips and her heart was his : 
being wife she made herself slave. 

But Sallust’s fancy was roaming, for glori- 
ous-eyed Camilla had drawn it away from 
Lucina bound in bands of her serpentine 
hair. It was now Lucina who besought. 

A kiss, my beloved, my idol !” 

But Sallust, who dreamed of Camilla’s un- 
given kisses, would pettishly wave her away. 

At least a kind word, my Sallust !” 

“ I never can get her to say one . . . .” the 
absent lover would mutter. 

Alas, then, a single smile ?” 

But Sallust had nothing to give her : he 
carried his kind words, his kisses, his smiles 
to the feet of Camilla, by whom he was 
disdained. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


69 


At last Lucina reproached him. 

“What would you ?” then answered Sal- 
lust. “When you yourself taught me the 
subtle charm of the inaccessible !’* 


At Nell's, October Z, 1889 . 


ro 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


FELICITAS. 

“ I cannot let you die ! — tlie gods will hear 
me — 

I am already dying. It is fate.'’ 

I will importune mercy of sweet Eros — ” 

Love, I am dying. Eros has been kind.” 

“ Yes, a whole emerald chain of summer 
days : but why this night at last — this hid- 
eous night ? Felix, stay, stay ! do not depart, 
adored ! — Alas, Eros ! Apollo ! Hermes ! Zeus ! 
. . . He dies ! Love, hear me first : I vow to 
be forever faithful to you ! Listen : I pledge 
my oath on Love’s own name ; may Eros 
smite me when I break it !” 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


71 


And I — I will return, Felicitas. If the 
soul lives. , . . return. . . 

Felix was dead. 

Time passed. Felicitas mourned, prayed 
and hoped. The last fire-flies, like sparks 
from summer's embers, guided her slow steps 
down the Way of Tombs. Autumn fled by 
with ricli tempestuous sunsets which found 
Felicitas beside his urn. Winter's keener 
starlight dwelt upon her veiled shape kneel- 
ing at the tomb's door: she waited and she 
wept. 

Felix, return — return, love ! But for one 
little moment ! That I may see you live, 
and love me still, and know I mourn 
you. . . ." 

Then she would gaze about her. A wind 
swept across her hair, like his caressing hand. 


72 


THE ARROWlS OR LOVE. 


Alas, a wind, no more ! A night-bird's dis- 
tant cry seemed like his call. Alas, a bird's 
call to its mate, not his to her ! In the portal 
of the tomb a shadow, as clouds obscured the 
moon. Alas, but a mocking shadow, for the 
moon, emerging, showed no phantom there. 

“ Felicitas," said Lucius, the friend of 
Felix, ‘‘ I also watch : I also pray. No sign 
has yet rewarded all my tears. What if we 
besought and watched together ?" 

Spring saw them passing, side by side, 
along the Way of Tombs. Golden-tongued 
Lucius would tell sweet tales of love to 
charm their pilgrimage. Eros at his birth 
had brought him eloquence, a gift the god in 
turn had filched from Hermes. 

Summer began to sow the fields with lilies 
Lucius murmured : 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


73 


‘‘Let us change the misty dusk for dawn.'* 
They watched, beside the tomb, all sum- 
mer's suns rise, and left it to wreathe flower- 
garlands for her hair. 

“ Felicitas, you grow so pale," said Lucius. 
“ Like a waned moon or these sad autumn 
leaves. Alas, our grief is sapping both of us ! 
Where is the radiance of your beauty gone ?" 

Winter found Felicitas consulting every 
day the bright steel of her long-neglected 
mirror. Their journeys to the tomb of Felix 
became fewer, but more frequent Lucius’ 
visits to her house. 

“ Felicitas, I love you ! — I would woo you ! 
Felicitas, I want you for my wife !’* 

“ Lucius, my vow to dying Felix ! — ” 

“ Felicitas, his broken vow to you !’’ 

The friend of Felix and his loved one were 


74 


THiC ARROWS OF LOVE. 


wedded when spring smiled. As the bride 
took her last vow Felix' figure rose at the 
bridegroom’s side. 

“ What have I done ?” shrieked Felicitas. 
‘‘ Felix ! — best beloved ! adored !” 

Where is that faith which is the soul of 
love ?" asked the phantom's mournful eyes. 

My wife, what is this?” said Lucius. 

She swooned in her maiden’s arms. 

‘‘ Felicitas, sweetest, awaken ! — this is our 
bridal day !” 

“ The curse has found me ! Our bridal 
day ! — and I love my lost love, not you !" 

At NelVs, October 8-9, 1889. 


fHE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


75 


THE POWER OF PAIN. 

He was a painter unapproached in power, 
in pathos and in tenderness. Before liis 
work the people wondered. 

“ Where does he find the splendid scarlet 
of his sunsets, the carmine of his women’s 
perfect lips, his fabrics’ crimson and his 
roses’ blush ?” 

He thought : 

From a heart-wound that will not be 
healed, but bleeds red drops forever.” 


The Canaries, 1890. 


76 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


THE WAGER OF JOVE. 

“ Rogue !*’ thundered Jove to slender Eros. 
** Do you dare to deride my love ?*’ 

‘‘Father of Gods, if I smiled it was at her 
fidelity.’' 

“You think you are stronger than I, then 
stripling, with your wings which my eagle’s 
wing could shatter at a blow ! We will try 
— your darts against my thunderbolts ; your 
power to omnipotence !” 

“Nay, be not angry with me, Jove : what 
mortal lover dead could match a living god ?” 

Jove despatched Ganymede, who loitered 
near, and waited chafing on his throne. 

“ She shall forget the earth in heaven first, 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


n 

and then her earthly love in mine. See, where 
she comes : herself shall be the prize — my 
mistress or your slave !’* 

Eros looked once at the eager face of the 
girl led by Ganymede. He saw lier lips 
move, and they trembled ; he divined her 
words : 

“ Is he here ?” 

Past them the pair went, silent : the cup- 
bearer fair and mute. They came to where 
Pactolus glided over the gold of its shining 
sands. 

“Spread your veil and heap it heavy with 
the treasure,*' said Ganymede. “ Gold is the 
master of the world. 

But Clyte passed on, sighing. 

“ My master is Love.'* 

They went where a cave-mouth gaped and 


78 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


the rumor of the Cyclopean forge rolled up. 
Black in the shadows, with eyes red as his 
coals, stood Vulcan forging the bolts of 
Jove. 

“ These are power : seize one fearlessly,'" 
said Ganymede. “ Power is the idol of the 
world."' 

Clyte turned from the clanging forge. 

My idol is love," she said. 

Their feet felt the flowers of the Elysian 
Fields, lying dreamlike in eternal spring. 

‘‘Gather them, they are happiness, man’s 
chimera and despair. Wreathe the red rose, 
the lily, in a garland for your hair. Here is 
the dreamy poppy, the tranquil asphodel — 
the violet’s surprise of hidden sweetness — *’ 

“ But where is the amaranth T* 

“ Come," said Ganymede, impatient for his 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


79 


master’s sake. ‘‘ Behold ! Those who scorn 
Heaven suffer here !” 

He led her where the peaceful meadows 
brinked the black abyss of Hell. 

Look, there are Cerberus and Minos, 
Styx and Phlegethon, the legions of the lost ! 
Look, behind you Heaven, where great Jove 
sits, flame upon a flaming throne; before you 
Hades — ” 

‘‘ No, Heaven’s self ! It is he ! He is there ! 
I come — I come !” 

‘‘Jove, you have lost,” said Eros. “Look 
below — far down the abyss. Watch till the 
mist drifts — ” 

The rolling vapors broke and showed two 
rapturous faces meeting in a kiss. 

Midland HoteU London, January 12, 1892. 

Written for Nell and fidith^ 


80 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


LOVE’S CHOICE. 

I love you !” 

Hush ! Such love is death ! No Vestal 
dare even listen to Love’s name.” 

‘‘ What, is it so perilous, Sabina, so allur- 
ing, so imperial ? Does Love’s name summon 
Love 

Yes — no — How cruel, Gordius, how cruel 
with a thousand cruelties you are !” 

What, would you have me leave you white 
and cold, like an iceberg in the polar win- 
ter’s night ? — No ! let love’s sun kiss the snow 
to rose at dawn, and bathe it biood-re,d 
before jealous night I” 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


81 


** Blood-red .... ah Gordius — I sicken 
. . . . red with your heart's blood were we 
discovered . . . ." 

“ Woman that you are — * were we discov- 
ered !* We shall not be discovered. We’ll 
fly Rome !** 

‘‘ Where would you take me ?’' 

Far to fabled Greece, where the gods 
lived in the morning of the world.” 

“But Rome would follow — Rome omnipo- 
tent — and battle out another Trojan War !” 

“To Egypt’s pyramids and palms, and 
deserts scorching as her suns, and older 
gods than ours, and great paternal river.” 

“ Rome is there.” 

“To Asia's land which ends at the world’s 
brink, where yellow races swarm and mystery 
hovers : wl^ere live huge beasts vyhose legs 


82 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


are towers and their ribs the sides of cita- 
dels—*' 

“ Rome's hand lies on it." 

“ Then to dim Britain in the northern 
mist, or Gaul with yellow-haired bar- 
barians — " 

No, Gordius, Rome is the mistress of the 
world : north, south, east, west, we face her. 
Love cannot wing us into lands beyond her 
hold but through the doors of Death.** 

By Venus, it is not pale death I seek, but 
love, with kissing lips as red as thine, sweet !" 

“ Gordius, begone ! that love is not for me, 
vowed to the tending of the white-flamed 
lamp of Vesta. It would be death to you 
and shame to me : I should be both murderess 
and traitress. Bid me farewell — swear you 
will not forget ! ... By this last kiss, my 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


83 


heart shall burn for you, till, lamp-like, it 
has drunk for oil my life-blood !*' 

Time passed. Their eyes met across the 
fierce arena : he near the Emperor, she in the 
Vestals* chairs. Their last delirious oath was 
sworn again as the triumph reeled on endless, 
false Zenobia at Aurelian’s chariot-wheels. 
For the priestess, long nights of prayer and 
pain ; long nights of revel for the lover. 
One day Gordius and Tullia, the sumptuous 
wanton, late the Emperor's toy, passed near 
the House of the Vestals, she lolling in her lit- 
ter, laughing, fanned half-naked by her slaves. 

That night Sabina lay dead, one blood- 
drop as red as love's lips on her white Vestal 
robes, a gold pin thrust through her heart. 

Gordius paled a little when he heard it 
from his favorite freedman and parasite. 


84 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


A bloody end for such a bloodless love !" 
he muttered, making haste to Tullia's. 

The blood-drop had the eloquence of love's 
own lips, but Tullia's were warmer, soft and 
perfumed. 

“ Kisses, not prayers," thought Gordius. 
“ Had she but been other than a Vestal she 
would have known they keep us kinder — and 
more faithful." 

S. S, City of Chicago^ Midocean^ 

" Dawn, January 26, 1 892, 

Written for Dick, 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


85 


HOW WOMAN LOVES. 

Augustus was the poet of the hour in 
Rome, and loved Pelagia. He sung the 
sweetest of his songs to her, bewildered her 
blonde head with ringing rhymes. Besides, 
he bribed her vanity with little lays which 
told the town how gold her hair and white 
her hand was. 

“ He must be Apollo’s self come in dis- 
guise ! How great, how wonderful !” the 
girl thought. And, like a little moth inebri- 
ate with light, she flew into the lamp, and 
they were married. 

The lamp was hot, but not with Eros' 


86 


TflU ARROWS OF LOVE. 


flame alone : there was jealousy superadded. 
Augustus, always nervous about rivals of the 
pen, now frenzied, fearing actual rivals. He 
looked at his old friends side-long, with this 
jewel in his breast, and made none new, for 
all the world were thieves. More irritable 
than a porcupine, he beat his slaves himself 
to help relax his nervous tension ; and his 
songs grew strident as the cicada's. 

Rome began laughing, and the Emperor 
heard. 

“ We must see this pearl,” he said, ‘‘before 
the vinegar dissolves her !” 

That day Augustus was commanded with 
his wife to banquet at the Golden House. 

Pelagia clapped her hands and danced 
across the floors of marble like a sunbeam. 

“ Wherefore this glee ?” scowled Augustus. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


87 


What wanton gadding spirit have we 
here ?** 

Pelagia hung her head before him. 

Home is so dull,” she said, with 
deprecation, and you do not love me 
any more. . . .” 

Augustus suddenly perceived the folly of 
his ways, the weakness of his terrors. Had 
he clasped her and kissed her, laughing, her 
dying love would have lived. But he sat like 
marble, bewildered, the scowl carved on his 
brow. And Pelagia, love dead in her heart, 
danced away to choose her robes and her 
jewels. 

The Emperor lay on his golden couch in 
white garments purple-edged. He was 
young, with voluptuous eyes and lips, low- 
browed and his name was Nero. Pelagia, 


88 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


likea)’'oung swan for grace, white-clothed, 

: fair-throated, pleased him; and her eyes, 
dancing as her feet had danced, met his, 
calm, smiling, narrow. 

Roses crowned the cups, lithe slaves danced 
linked with chains of roses ; roses bloomed 
in Pelagia’s cheeks which Nero longed to 
gather. 

“Let us drink the parting cup,’’ the Em- 
peror said at last. “ I am weary.*’ He spoke 
the words with a glance at a Greek slave 
skilled in the mixing of poisons. 

Golden cups of wine were brought, and his 
jeweled goblet for Nero. 

“ Drink,” said the despot, “ and take these 
cups as my tribute to beauty and song.” 

Augustus drank as if to drown sorrow : 
Pelagia smiled in the Emperor’s eyes. They 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


89 


lingered, for still Nero lay like a waiting 
serpent, inert on his golden couch. 

Suddenly the poet, witli tlie glare of one 
who sees a treachery too late and has no 
voice left to proclaim it, foaming rigid and 
convulsed rolled from his couch, and lay dead 
face downward on the marble. 

Pelagia shrieked and shrank, her hand 
thrown up to shut away the sight. Nero 
approached her. 

‘‘I love you,'* he murmured. ‘‘I love 
you. . . and kissed heron that paling rose, 
her mouth. 

Summer passed with the roses, and dying 
Pelagia, a white rose, longed for the sun. 

“ Let him come to me once,'* she breathed, 

that I may die with my eyes on his face." 

Nero came, curious but weary. 


90 


THE ARROWS OE LOTE. 


‘‘Why do you call me? Remember 
Augustus, who loved you — adored you : not 
I, when you are dying from my blow/’ 

“ Never ! You are my god : let me live or 
die as pleases you. Why should I remember 
his feeble feverish love ? — rather throw my 
tender body on the sword of your indiffer- 
ence. One last kiss, Nero — I die. ... I 
loved you because he was weakness— you 
are strength !” 

S, S, City of Chicago^ January 29, 1892. 

Written for Nell. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


91 


WISDOM OR HAPPINESS? 

Lycias and Charis were happy as the nesting 
nightingale and his brown-breasted love. It 
was the month of mellow moons, rich August, 
and Diana shone supreme upon Endymion’s 
hill. One twilight, after a long drowsy day 
beside his sheep which found the honey-laden 
thyme so sweet, Lycias was going home. In 
his path knelt a strange youth beautiful as 
love, but faint and pallid, who was tying his 
worn sandal. The shepherd took the weary 
stranger home, and Charis served them bread 
and wine and fruit. When the lovers, arms 
about each other, offered him a shelter for 
the night, he rose. 


92 


TMi: ARROWS OF LOVE. 


“Know that you have eaten WMth a god,’’ 
he said. 

“ A god ?” they murmured, awe-struck. 

“ Eros, God of Love,” the stranger, 
answered : they knelt together at liis feet. 

“ I offer you one of two gifts at parting,” 
said Eros. “ Wisdom and Happiness. Wis- 
dom must already guide your choice, and 
Happiness will bird-like fly or nestle on the 
issue. For Love,” the god bent his white 
brow thoughtful and serene above them, 
“ never comes with certainty of lasting pain 
or lasting joy. My gifts are as cunning cas- 
kets, of which slow time must turn the key.” 

“Wisdom !” cried Lycias, gladly. “ Hap- 
piness is fast already in our arms.” 

“ So be it,” said the god. 

They were alone. 


THE ARROWS OP LOVE. 


93 


‘‘Chads,’* suddenly said Lycias, “ your eye- 
brows show the meeting mark of jealousy. 
Those smiles as sweet as honey in the rock- 
chink are the beckon of a wanton soul. 
Those eyes would flame and languish more 
when monarchs praised than when your shep- 
herd loved. Why did I never see before that 
all your beauty is the transient mask of 
youth ?” 

“ Lycias, you are mad, or crueller than 
death !’* cried Charis. “ What is this ?’* 

“It must be Wisdom, which I chose just 
now, which shows me all things as they are. 
Why did the god come with his blasting 
gift ? Nothing remains of all my life. The 
moon, there : where’s the silver splendor of 
Diana’s amorous brow ? — she’s weary satellite 
of wparier .earth. Ye gods !— But no ! No 


94 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


gods ! — all sucked into the shrouded sem- 
blance of a vast soul-shadowing power !’' 

** Lycias, you rave ! Lay your head soft 
here on my breast and sleep, while my heart 
sings ‘ I love you ! I love you !’ ’* 

I know that I chose wrong,” said Lycias, 
with stony eyes upon the past. “ I know that 
now I should choose right .... But, above 
all, I know that no chance given and lost is 
ever given us again.” 

Lycias — ” 

Silence. Love is no longer Love when 
the fillet is off his eyes. Until then he lords 
all spheres, and makes all gods and worlds 
and blisses his alone. Till then he gives us 
riches beyond gold, realms beyond empire, 
dreams beyond Elysium .... Where am I ? 
Who are you . The whole world's 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


95 


changed. Our heaven’s gone ! Our heaven's 
gone !’* 

The far-off voice of Eros reached them, 
calm and thoughtful as his white immortal 
brows. 

“ Lycias,’' it breathed, “ knowing all, you 
know at last the faces underneath the masks. 
You know that Wisdom is the folly of the 
soul, and Happiness its wisdom — but too 
late !" 

The Chelseay New York* 

April 14, 1892, 


96 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


BY EROS’ GRACE. 

The ship was sailing fast and free for 
Greece : the lovers had escaped. 

“Thanks to immortal Eros!” murmured 
Carus, looking backward and holding his 
beloved to his breast. 

“ May the All-potent give us happiness !” 
breathed Sylvia : a woman has two prayers 
for each thanksgiving. 

Eros heard, and smiled : the two were 
beautiful as morning’s rosy opal on the sea. 
Before the sun had reached the zenith, 
tempest rode the billows, and the ship went 
down. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


97 


Night fell ; the moon rose round in the 
heavens ; the lovers lay dead, heart to heart, 
on the shore. Their lips bore the smile of 
the morning, the kisses of promise more fair 
than fulfilment. No hot glare of midday, no 
afternoon weariness, none of the sadness of 
evening, were there : the two had not lived 
till the night, when the moon of experience 
reflects the lost sunlight of love. 

Little silver waves unrolled along the sands 
and whispered ‘‘Happiness!’* The wind, 
passing softly by the lovers* lips, breathed 
“Happiness!** upon their smile. 

5 . S. Independente, off Alexandria, Egypt, 

Night, November 13-14, 1892. 


98 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE, 


THE ENIGMA OF LOVE. 

Cecilia was beautiful, patrician, young, 
Valerius’ wife, and chaste as famed Lucretia. 
Beautiful, she was yet unloved, and young, 
she was yet unhappy. Valerius, whom she 
adored, reproached her sad face which had 
once been joyous ; and when she feigned 
gayety to win him back, asked cynically what 
had changed her. More love escaped her, 
more she pursued him, fleeting, bright as a 
will-o’-the-wisp : why should not she be loved 
as well as Tullia, the emperor’s jade, who 
sold herself for twice her weight in gold ? 
The statue of Eros, Parian white as the god’s 


THE AKKOWS OF LOVE. 


99 


own forehead, gleamed from an alcove; Cecilia 
met with eyes tear-blinded the mysterious 
eyes of love. When Valerius, returning from 
a night at play, sneered savage at her vigils, 
her look would seek the marble, eloquent yet 
mute, and question : 

“Why?’’ 

When Valerius returned from some fierce 
orgie, carried like a log amidst his slaves 
she would think of summer evenings in the 
magic moonlight, winter nights beside the 
hearth, of ever-wedded hands, and whisper : 

“ Why ?” 

When Valerius, for sport, one day compared 
her, charm by charm, with gorgeous Tullia, 
her hope’s heart broke. His love was dead, 
then. . . . Her quenched eyes met the all- 
wise godlike gaze, still asking : 


100 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


“ Why 

Valerius had squandered fortune, love, 
health, honor, and was dead. Cecilia had 
reached and passed the ultimate far ring of 
suffering's magic circle, and was calm. 
Fabian, who had loved her unsuspected 
through the years of her neglect, came to 
offer her a heart long hers already, wealth, 
fair life once more at its beginning. 

She fixed a long look on him, grave, 
mysterious as Eros' own, and gave consent. 
She thought of love returned a suppliant 
when no longer sought for and desired ; of 
the burning past and its pain, like a dead 
volcano shrouded in cold lava ; of her empty 
heart like a fiameless lamp ; of the mysterious 
eyes of Eros. 

As Fabian laid the kiss of betrothal solemn 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


101 


as a sacrament upon her brow, her look met 
the calm look of the God of Love in an 
eternal : 

‘‘ Why ?" 

Cairo, Egypt, 

Midnight, November 21, 1892. 


102 


THE) ARROWS OF LOVE. 


LOVE'S THORNY ROSE. 

A beggar-girl roamed singing down the 
roads which led to Rome. 

‘‘Life is beautiful!” her song ran. “And 
beautiful are spring and youth.” She sang 
like a nightingale the sweet refrain “ Life — 
life is beautiful !” 

A scholar trudged by, old and meagre- 
faced. 

“ What is the best thing in life ?” she asked. 
“ Why does my song say life is beautiful ? 
Tell me what makes it so.” 

“Why, learning,” answered the scholar. 

A patrician passed in his chariot. 


TJiE AfiROWS OE LOVE. 


105 

“ Rank,” he condescended, is the rarest 
good.” 

A slave beside him whispered “Freedom.” 

“ Wealth, child,” replied the fat freedman, 
now turned pander to his former patron. 

“ Fame !” breathed the poet, with his soul 
amongst the stars and his feet amongst the 
stones, in broken sandals. 

“ Wisdom,” answered the sage, his beard a 
silver cloud upon his breast. “ My fourscore 
years have taught that, wanting nothing, we 
have all.” 

“ Hope,” moaned a woman who had lost it 
with the fair twins Love and Beauty. 

“ Revenge !” cried the jealous lover, flying, 
with a bloody dagger hidden in his breast. 

“ Beauty,” murmured the beloved, whose 
bridegroom rode so close beside her silken 
litter. 


104 


THE ARROWS OE LOVE. 


‘‘ Power/’ said the consul, proudly : before 
the beggar-girl he felt himself an emperor. 

Then two Greek youths overtook her ; one 
beautiful, and one divinely fair : the first 
made answer with a burning look, the second 
with one calm word, “ Love.” 

What is love ?” asked Virginia. 

** It is everything in the world !” 

The youth and girl went onward to the 
city, hand in hand : unawares, they found 
themselves alone. He of the sublimer beauty, 
vanishing, had left the magic word like some 
strange jewel. 

Spring had richened to summer, which 
boisterous autumn had borne away. The 
lovers could no longer live upon a leaf of lus- 
cious mulberries, the dew and honey of fresh 
fjgs. Besides, Orestes was jealous of Virginia, 
with her black eyes and her golden hair. 


THE AKR0W8 OF LOVE. 


105 


“ You never sing ‘ Life is beautiful ' now, 
as you used to in the spring/' he cried, 
complaining. 

** Why should I sing what is false she 
asked. “Yes, false as love's own self! If 
love wore a Tyrian vest, and never scowled 
with jealousy, and served me on gold, and 
decked me with gems, I might sing that life 
was beautiful. I wish — " 

The door slid open, and the Greek who had 
said “ Love ” with such calm lips, appeared. 

“ I have found you a patron, Orestes, wlio 
will buy your statuettes and never grudge 
his gold. Perhaps Virginia's wish will be 
fulfilled though yet unspoken. Carry some 
figures — here, this Eros with his bow — and 
follow to the palace." 

Winter found Virginia decked with gems 


106 


TflE AJlEO'W’S OE LOViC. 


and served on gold by the perfidious patron 
of Orestes. Her wish was granted : love 
wore Tyrian dyes and never scowled with 
jealousy. 

Spring opened all the flowers* hearts, the 
throats of all the birds, the wings of hopes 
unbidden. 

‘‘And Orestes.^*’ asked Virginia, of the 
other Greek. 

“ You ask of sad Orestes ?** 

“Yes, because I wished for love without 
his pains and pricks, and I find that love*s no 
longer love without them.** 

The stranger smiled, a calm indulgent all- 
divining smile, the smile of deity on things 
but mortal. 

Summer flung her fruits and flowers forth 
with lavish hands. The sun shone on tlie 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


107 


roads which led from Rome. Virginia and 
Orestes went along them hand in hand, and 
they were singing : 

“ Life is beautiful !'* 

Cairo y Egypt, 

Midnight, November 22, 1892. 


108 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


DAPHNE. 

The land was full of lilies and the scented 
air of song, where lark and nightingale were 
nesting. Love and Spring passed, laughing, 
hand in hand, themselves like lovers, through 
the world. 

Girls danced circling, flower-fettered, while 
their shepherds played on syrinx and Pan's 
mellow pipes. Daphne, the gold-haired and 
white-footed, dreamed apart, when a stranger 
youth appeared beside her. 

Daphne, what thought is this which 
sways the balance against love ?" 

She would have fled, but met his eyes, and, 
stirless, shrank and trembled. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


109 


I dare not love/* she murmured. I 
should love my beautifirl Alcaeus only, love 
him always. What if his heart were not the 
mate to mine in sweet fidelity ?’* 

“ What if I promised you that Eros* self 
should chain it captive, yours till death ?” 

She, the white-footed, kissed the whiter- 
footed god, prostrated, and the gracious 
vision vanished. 

Spring, with her crown of daffodils, was 
gone, and summer, crowned with wheat and 
poppies. Daphne found her shepherd faithful, 
but delayed till, after autumn and white 
winter, spring returned. Tlien with the 
yellow crocus-stars, came Paris, roaming 
home from distant lands. The faithful heart 
of Daphne turned, like bright-eyed mottle- 
breasted thrush’s, to the new year’s love, 


110 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


Again the girls were dancing to their 
shepherds’ tunes, and Daphne dreamed apart. 
Again the god stood softly near her, and she 
never heard him come. 

What is the load upon that faithful heart, 
when all the world is light with spring ?” 

Daphne would have fled, but met his eyes, 
and cast her shamed eyes down. 

It is not faithful.” 

Eros’ eyes were smiling as some deep 
pool smiles when a faun’s arch face is 
glassed there. 

** What if I should bind your heart to Paris 
as Alcaeus’ heart is bound to you ?” 

The god’s white feet were hidden in her 
loose hair’s rippled gold, and covered with 
her kisses. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


Ill 


Summer saw her wedded, but to Paris, not 
Alcaeus, and rich autumn saw Alcaeus dead. 
White-bearded winter dug the old year’s 
grave, and mad spring, returned once more, 
set Paris roving. Now Daphne^ the gold- 
haired and white-footed, called on Love, and 
Eros stood before her. 

‘‘Gracious beyond all gods in heaven, 
grant one last request experience has taught 
me ! Make our hearts equal in fidelity as 
they were equal once in love V* 

Eros gazed on her with eyes like the forest- 
pool at midnight when the fauns are fled 
and sleeping. 

“You ask for the impossible,’' he mur- 
mured. As he spoke, she saw a bloodstain 
on his perfect feet^ 


112 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


What is that?*' she muttered, cowering 
away. 

‘‘ The life-blood of a broken heart," 

Palazzo BarharigOy Venice. 

Midfitght, February 28, 1893. 


THK ARROWS OF LOVE. 


113 


THE LESSONS OF LOVE. 

The slave-mart was thronged. Ben-Akra 
had grouped together the handsomest girls 
he had to sell. They were talking apart to 
each other ; a black-eyed Egyptian, white 
Persian and golden-haired Greek. 

“ Neither of you have suffered as I ha'^e !** 
The eyes of Uarda gleamed like a snake's 
under straight black metting brows. I 
loved old Akra's son, and left my home and 
my people for him — left the Nile with its 
yellow tide, the mighty temples of our gods 
old as the sun, my father’s palage and my 


114 : 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


sisters' arms, for that youth whose cursed 
Jewish beauty had bewitched me. When he 
tired of me he brought me with others to 
Rome from Alexandria. When I reproached 
him with neglect and cruelty, he told me they 
would sell me as a slave ! . . . My love 
turned into hate as fierce as hell : I threw 
myself upon the supple coward and killed 
him with one thrust of a gold hairpin in his 
throat!" 

“You were at least avenged!” breathed 
Zaira. “ I could not even save my master. He 
was Persia's lord of lords ; I, his : he loved 
me more than his throne of diamonds, more 
than the giant ruby in his turban ; that rub}^ 
bright as blood which the necromancer told 
him to guard like his life, for life could only 
leave him at its loss, I used to play with it 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


115 


and say it was his heart ; he liked to watch it 
flame in my white hands. Meanwhile the 
soldiery grew jealous of the peaceful king 
and all our pleasures ; my name was hooted 
through Teheran as cause of these long lax 
unwarlike days ; a traitor satrap rebelled 
against liis Shah, and led half Persia's army 
on the palace. I sprang before my lord, to 
shield him with my body, but he himself put 
me aside .... As they bore me out, I saw 
the traitor's cimeter swing flashing up, the 
ruby roll down redly, and then — the head 
which I had pillowed on my heart . . . ." 
She stared before her, white, unweeping. 

“ I was Nero's slave in Greece," said Iris. 
‘‘ My fate was unhappier than yours. I loved 
his serpent-beauty as I might have loved a 
god's. I followed him as only dog — or 


116 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


canine-hearted woman — follows. He was 

my sun, my world, my heaven, my present, 
future, all ! One day Poppaea stamped and 
pouted, and the next I passed from Nero to 
Ben-Akra. The hour I am sold will see this 
knife pass through and through my heart.’* 
Love teaches each different lessons,** said 
the Egyptian, with her slow curved smile. 

He never passes without teaching. To me 
he has taught hate of all the world.** 

‘^To me indifference so deep that I think I 
died when my lord did,** said the Persian. 

Died to all pain and joy, all hope and all 
despair, when he died.** 

The Greek looked wistfully from each to 
each. 

“ To you love has taught only hatred and 


THE ARKOW8 OF LOVE. 


117 


indifference : to me he has taught sympathy 
for everything that lives.*' 

Cairthillian House, The Lizard, England, 

Midday and Evenmg, April lo, 1893. 


118 


THE ARROWS OR LOVE. 


LOVE’S OMNIPOTENCE. 

Have, Caesar ! Those about to die salute 
thee !” 

It was the secutor and retiarius who 
entered the arena ; the swordsman and the 
subtler caster of the net, both favorites of 
Nero. The emperor smiled, his thirst for 
blood a little whetted by the scene just ended ; 
a gladiator vanquished by a brave barbarian, 
the down-turned thumbs of the angry myriad, 
the slain, unpitied, dragged with iron hooks 
across the sand to oblivion and obloquy. As 
Nero smiled, a girl dropped a rose from her 
breast at the feet of Julius and Marcus. They 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


119 


plunged into each other's eyes a gaze of mor- 
tal hate and challenge, then looked upwards. 

Antonia leaned above them on the ledge 
of stone, as from a balcony. Her look 
languished downwards to the fallen rose, 
and lost itself in Julius' eyes. 

The combat began. The secutor fled, light 
as hope's self ; the retiarius followed, grim 
as vengeance and despair. Antonia, imperial 
in youth’s and beauty's purples, was divine in 
the autocracy of love. 

The thousands roared : a wound ! Blood 
flowed at last, after the bounding flight, the 
endless stealthy wearying pursuit. Julius 
had wheeled in mid-career, and struck, and 
fled again before the net could reach him. 

Antonia clapped her hands and laughed. 
As if that laugh had pierced through all 


120 


•THE ARROWS OR LO\^E. 


Rome’s roar into his brain, Marcus looked up 
and met her eyes. As he urged onward, 
Julius, light as Zephyr, lauglied across his 
shoulder like her echo. 

Marcus left bloodstains in the sand as he 
went by : he had slackened his pace, still 
stumbling onward. Julius wheeled like a 
panther and sprang towards him. The whole 
circus held its breath. 

The retiarius gathered the cloud of his net 
in his hand, and waited. His rival attacked 
and retreated, supple and swift ; the sword 
clashed with the trident. The wound still 
gaped like a mouth whose speech was blood, 
but Marcus stood like granite : the thirsty 
sword had not reached the red fountain its 
bright lips longed for, again. 

Swift as a storm-cloud spreading black on a 


The akrows of love. 


121 


southern sk3% the net was cast. Julius sprang 
his own length backward at a bound . . . . 
but the retiarius had vanquished. 

As the secutor, entangled, flung headlong 
in the sand, glared up, he saw her face. 
They were where the rose had dropped, and 
the retiarius, his foot upon the other's breast, 
had raised it. 

Nero signalled Death ; the Vestals sig- 
nalled Death ; the multitude turned down 
the thumb. Antonia leaned forward, frozen : 
as the trident struck, she shrieked out a wail 
like some lost soul's. 

The circus roared : it was ended. But 
Julius died with a smile on his lips. 

Cacrthillian House y The Lizard, England. 

Evening, April 13, 1893. 


122 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


CALISTA. 

Tullia was at her toilet. A beautiful hand- 
maid, holding the bright steel mirror, knelt 
beside her mistress. Clodius watched the 
girl instead of Tullia, and sometimes saw her 
blush at what she heard. 

“ Get me that emerald, then,*' said Tullia. 
“I covet it to match with my green eyes !** 
They gleamed like a leopard's as she spoke 
and tossed aside a length of ruddy hair. 

Done," said the debauchee. “You shall 
have one for each pink ear — if you will barter 
me the girl who holds your mirror.*' 

Tullia frowned and cast a glance of 
arrogant surprise towards Calista. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


123 


Then she is yours/' she answered. Send 
an eunuch with the emeralds, and let him 
take her back. Mind, big as pigeon's eggs 
and greener than — " 

A crash. The mirror and the girl lay at 
her feet. 

“ What, swooned ? A compliment to you, 
eh, Clodius ? — I’ll rouse her, though !” She 
stooped before he saw her drift, and plunged 
a gold pin in the slave’s white breast, for 
Clodius was her favorite lover. She’ll not 
let your head rest easy there for many a 
night, I wager !" laughed the courtesan. 

The patrician strode from the chamber, 
cursing deep under his breath. The wanton 
pushed Calista with her silken-sandalled foot, 
just delicately shod and perfumed. 

“ Get up, girl 1 Are you daintier than 


124 


THE ARROWS OE LOVE. 


your mistress, or did you maybe swoon for 
joy ? . . . Bear up the disc again, until Fve 
done this tinting of my eyebrow. Steady ! 
By Mors, if you tremble Til drive this dagger 
where I set the pin." 

An hour later Calista reeled out of the 
chamber, blood upon her bosom and her 
robe, fresh blood which trickled always. 

“ Calista 1" 

“ Tamlik ! I am sold to Clodius ! We 
must part — !" 

The youth stood frozen. 

He had been patrician in Palmyra, and 
was carried captive with his traitor-queen to 
Rome. Tullia had begged him of Aurelian, 
who meant to let him figlit a Nubian lion for 
his life in the arena. 

*‘Sold — ? To Clodius ?" muttered Tamlik. 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


125 


To Clodius. . . ! What is this blood upon 
your breast, then ? Gods ! if I were lord, not 
slave, and back in Asia !” 

She stabbed me when I swooned with 
horror, and but a minute since drew out the 
pin. Save me, Tamlik ! I love you — don’t let 
them drag me — Clodius ! — never ! — ” 

“Calista,” he murmured, her face on his 
breast, his lips in her loosened hair, “must I 
save you ? . . . There is a love which sets 
its idol above life and all the smiling gifts of 
fate ; a love that rather dies than yields, a 
love that rather kills than loses. That is my 
love, Calista : is it yours?” 

“Yes, Tamlik, yes a thousand times ! . . . 
What was that ? They come from Clodius — 
ah, save me ! save me — !” 

“ What a white dove it is !” said the 


126 


THE ARROWS OF LOYE. 


eunuch of the emeralds, taking from a slave 
a golden box, and passing into Tullia’s 
chamber. ... Well, have you kissed fare- 
well ?” he asked, a-grin, returning soon, his 
errand done. 

Yes, farewell forever,*' Tamlik answered, 
marble-lipped. “Farewell — forever. Take 
her." 

“ Swooned," said the eunuch. “ Here, 
slave — What ! She's dead !’* 

“ Tell Clodius I killed her," answered 
Tamlik. 

Caerthillian House, Written in the Garden, 
April 19 , 1893 . 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


127 


THE RIDDLE OF THE WORLD. 

A Pilgrim wandered through the wide 
world, with a question on his lips : 

‘‘What is the meaning of life 

Life himself, asked, would not answer. He 
said : 

^ I am the riddle of the world.'' 

The Pilgrim met Death. 

“ Dark twin of Life, his foe and curse, 
his ever-dogging shadow, solve the weary 
problem !*’ 

“ As well ask Sleep, with all his idle 
dreams. I only know I take the loath and 
leave the lief, and am." Death strode on, 
frowning. 


128 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


Hope, can you tell me life’s meaning ?** 

No one knows it but the hidden gods. 
This desire alone I cannot flatter : shall I call 
Illusion — V* 

The Pilgrim went his way. 

Despair, what is life ? I am fainting with 
the riddle’s burden bound upon my back !” 

I only know the poison which can kill 
him, not the subtle sources of his strength.” 

“ Youth, his page and favorite, you can 
answer !” 

No, I only feel him like the sun.” 

Age, you can tell, when you have fol- 
lowed him as true as black night follows 
day.” 

“ What does black night know of the sun, 
or I of Life ?” the grim hag answered. 

The Pilgrim was footsore and faint : 


THE AJRROWS OF LOVE. 


129 


met with Good and Evil, and conjured tliem 
to reply. 

** We two are part of the riddle, part of 
life’s meaning,*’ answered Good. 

** Could you ascertain the quantities which 
represent us in the problem, you would near 
your end,” said- Evil. “But no mortal yet 
has learned them.” 

“Duty, will you tell me?” gasped the Pil- 
grim, leaning heavy on his staff. 

“ I am his mentor by the way, but his 
beginning and his end I know not.” 

“ Religion, you at least, who know the 
faces of the hidden gods, the inner ways of 
all things — ” 

“ I only know I am Morality, and creeds 
are but the veils in which man masks me,” 

“ Well, what is man 


130 


THE AKROWS OF LOVE. 


What life is, man is — being ; but being 
how wide, how deep, how durable, who 
knows !” 

Nature passed, leaning on her first-born, 
Hate. 

I could tell you if I would,'* she muttered, 
smiling. 

‘‘Intolerable hag!" groaned the Pilgrim. 
“ Mother of the whole vast coil of mystery 
and pain 1 You are the steward of hell, who 
keeps the fires ever ardent — water ever at the 
lips of Tantalus ! When do we rest ? — there 
is childbirth and dying from moon to moon 
upon earth. When do we enjoy } — our mor- 
tal blisses, brief and mixed, mock souls which 
thirst for godhead and eternity. We are cer- 
tain of nothing except change and death. 
We are born deformed in spirit, slaves to 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


131 


hate. As the doomed gazelle leaps trembling 
<rom tlie tiger, vve fly before the face of fate. 
Yes, you could tell, accursed one, why all 
things live in fear and die in pain !’* 

Nature and Hate plodded on, and left him 
swooned with impotent and noble rage. 
Love knelt beside him. 

‘‘ I have a false key to the hidden door/' he 
said. You seek eternity where all the 
secrets of the veiled gods swim like stars, and 
where the problem of life's meaning is but 
Sirius amongst their paler fires. I can give 
YOU heaven and hell, and make time shrink to 
seconds or expand to ages ; I can make a 
woman's hands the scales to weigh your soul, 
her eyes have power to deify or damn you. 
You shall hang in limbo, tangled in a tress of 
hair between sweet face and sweeter bosom ; 


132 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


you shall drink eternity like some imperial 
pearl dissolved away into a kiss 

Yes/’ said the Pilgrim/* I have drunk tlie 
pearl and spilt the wine, and it is ended. Now 
I would climb to where the smoke of that 
libation, costlier than my blood, is gone. I 
have questioned and searched, and found 
nothing : my strength is spent .... I can 
only — die . . . .” 

*‘ Has he found the soul of the wine ? 
the perfume, happiness ?” mused Love. 
** Perhaps.’' 

New York, 

After Midnight^ May 9, 1893. 


THE AKKOWS OF LOVE. 


133 


INEXORABLE CHANGE. 

The mistress of Marius was dead : she was 
famed the most beautiful woman in Rome. 
The sculptor sat beside the couch where she 
was lying : the lamps burned on, the night 
grew deep. 

“ Soon of our love but ashes will remain — • 
pale ashes of her body and my soul. Glories 
of life, what transmutes you ? wliere do you 
fade to flame again ? Are you eternal, or pass- 
ing as the breath that leaves these flower-lips 
so cold ? Does nature hold gall as sweet as 
honey deformity as fair as beauty? black 
falsehood white as truth ? She must, for she 


134 


TH13 ARROWS OR LOVE. 


SOWS good and evil with impartial hands, and 
tramples them with feet that never falter .... 
Why does the beautiful escape from eyes and 
soul as the seven-chorded rainbow from the 
heavens ?’' 

The flower-mouth, which might have an- 
swered him did Death but let his prisoners 
return, was mute. 

“ Marble hand and breast and brow ! Heart 
and lips of marble ! . . . Let me transmute 
that white incomparable beauty into the 
eternal stone !*' 

The seasons passed, changing like pleasure 
and pain, and the sculptor endlessly labored. 
None but his slaves saw his face till his work 
was done, and his last sands dropping 
through the glass of time. At last he had 


Me AllROWS of LOVE. 


135 


transmuted her incomparable beauty into the 
eternal stone. 

“This, at least, will remain, “ he murmured 
when his Venus stood before the city. “ Time 
may go on, and nature may destroy, and flesh 
may rot, but marble is forever." 

His eyes were on her beauty rescued from 
the tomb. As he gazed, life's dream had 
vanished : he was dead. 

The seasons turned with the wheel of the 
year, and Alaric burst upon Rome. Barba- 
rians conquered the Mistress of the World, 
and flung the peerless Venus from her altar. 

The heart of Marius did not leap, his brain 
convulse, for heart and brain were ashes. 
Nature devoured, flesh rotted, time went on, 
but marble also perished. It is not enough 
that loves and hopes die swifter than the 


136 


THE AERO-W^S Ot LOVE. 


hearts that bear them, but works die also, 
with the fading colors on a wall, a broken 
statue, some lost leaf of paper ravished by 
the wind. 

Midday t May 13, 1893. 

Ntw York, 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


13T 


LOVE THE COWARD. 

Theodora was passing from her marble villa 
at Vesuvius* foot to Rome : Octavius, the 
consul and her husband, had returned victo- 
rious with Aurelian from the east. He was 
to meet her and her train of slaves midway, 
but before he did so mountain robbers seized 
them. Even as Theodora, proud and chaste, 
aimed her dagger at her own white breast, the 
herculean bandit-captain, laughing, wrenched 
it from her hands with one of his and tossed 
it from her. A second later he was striding 
to his camp, like Pluto with a new Persephone, 
when the knife was driven through his strong 


138 


THE ABItOWS OF LOVS5. 


neck's joints by a hand as ready as his own. 
Theodora glimpsed a stranger-face above her 
as she lapsed into unconsciousness, and 
thought it must be Mars — who could be so 
strong and swift, and who so beautiful, if not 
a god ? 

She roused. Safe in her silken litter — and 
that face ... ? It must have been a dream. 
She heard a voice she knew, and one, like 
music’s self, whose mellow Latin hinted at 
the Greek. That must be his — ! She pushed 
the curtain back with febrile fingers. Her 
husband and her rescuer were there. They 
were parting, the consul backed with soldiers 
eagle-helmed, the Greek with a small retinue 
of servants. 

“ When you visit Rome, my house is 
yours,” Octavius said. 


THE ARROWS OF LOTS. 


139 


“ And mine is yours at Salamis.*' 

Tliey parted : the Greek witliout a look 
towards the litter. Theodora swooned again. 

Three years had passed : Octavius was 
dead, and Theodora free. The sun had never 
risen through those thousand days but she 
had thouglit “ He shines on Salamis.** And 
now ? 

Now she trembled, longed, feared, hesi- 
tated, dreamed, until another year was over. 
What if she should find him wedded to some 
girl a hundred times more beautiful than 
she ? What if all her iris arc of hope, the 
bridge her dreams reached heaven by, should 
fade at his indifference? . . . Sweet spring 
filled her veins with love and roaming : she 
sacrificed to Venus and sailed swift for 
Salamis. 


140 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


“ Lordly love !'* she thought, grown bold 
and joyous. “ He makes life’s gourd a 
golden cornucopia brimmed with pearls. 
Now I am imperial as Caesar: I shall see his 
face and hear his voice again !” 

‘‘Phidias — ?” she murmured, blushing, 
standing veiled upon his threshold. 

“ Follow,” said the slave, and left her there 
alone in Phidias' chamber. Silence. . . . 
no greeting .... was he coming? She un- 
wreathed her veil. 

He was lying dead before her. 

There was the divine face she had wor- 
shipped — but the voice? and all love’s 
dreams ? and all life's promise ? . . . The year 
was gone ; the year which might have coined 
its endless seconds into priceless love ! The 
long year, opulent in hours each an age, and 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


141 


seasons all eternity might drown in ! Coward ! 
she had wasted it in fears and dreams, while 
Time and Death stole near across the world. 
The incomparable year was gone forever, and 
the grave's jaws gaping, said : 

Too late !" 

Drea^ned at the Cathedral, 

Written after Midnight, May 24, 1893. 

New York, 


142 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


LOVE THE BRAVE. 

The sun shone brazen in the Roman sky : 
broad awnings screened tlie circus. Nero 
lolled weary in the imperial seat while 
saffron sawdust masked red hidden stains. 
A grim door opened, then shut fast behind 
the girl thrust reeling into the arena. A 
Christian, ready for the lions : she looked 
up, blinded, stunned. 

“ By Venus !” muttered Nero. 

The giant wheel of faces staring down 
appalled her : she could never find his face 
amongst the rest ! . . . To meet a bloody 
death without one look from him, one 


TUE AEROWS OF LOVE. 


143 


token. ... at her feet a red rose fell. She 
lifted it, looked up with straining glances, 
and held it to her breast, still gazing 
wildly upward. 

The girl is beautiful," said Nero. She 
ought to be an emperor's plaything, not a 
lion’s ! Well, too late to make the change — 
the brute is out — and beauty’s always in the 
market." 

His head’s swift serpent-poise of eagerness 
was lapsing into languor, when the lion 
turned. He also was dazzled, after dungeon- 
darkness, but smelt blood — and he had 
starved three days. 

“Faugh !...’’ the emperor mustered. “A 
morsel for the gods .... sheer waste in the 
arena — " At the instant, as the wild beast 
gathered for his spring, a youth leapt to the 
ground beside him. 


144 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


“ Mars ! what’s this ?” 

The lion roared, the tigers began roaring, 
all Rome roared within the mighty pit. 
Julian had fallen on the beast of prey, and 
tiiey rolled together in the bloody sand. 

Phoebe, her rose against her breast, an arm 
stretched to the wall to keep herself from 
falling, stood breathless, watching the gleam 
of fangs and glaucous eyes, and the glitter of 
a dagger. How many times must he plunge it 
in before the brute would cease to roar and 
rend and struggle ? How many lifetimes long 
must he be face to face with death ? 

Nero, leaning forward, long eyes keen 
and curled lips smiling, saw Julian plant 
one last stab in the desert-despot’s side, and 
press towards the imperial tribune, 

Caesar, her life !” 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


145 


** It is yours,” answered Nero, smiling down 
as he alone could smile. ‘‘To-night you shall 
sleep in the Golden House : to-morrow you 
are free of all the world !” 

The multitude bellowed its delight : tne 
boy was brave, the girl was beautiful. What 
he had sliown them had excited and amused 
them more than seeing her devoured un- 
resisting. 

The lovers praised God as they embraced, 
but Fate was near. That night they were 
the guests of Nero. While Julian lay dying 
by a bowl of poisoned wine, white Phoebe 
was an emperor’s plaything. 

Dreamed at the Cathedral, 

Writtefi at Dawn t May 24, 1893. 

Ne^f York, 


THE ABKOWS OF LOVE. 


146 


THE BANQUET OF LOVE. 

Eros was host at a feast to youth, manhood 
and age. His guests were served by the 
Passions and the Hours ; Hope, the god*s 
favorite handmaid, brought them wine. The 
banquet lasted a whole hour of eternity, a 
period in which was born and died the 
human race. 

Though the same meats perpetually re- 
appeared, in infinitely various disguise of 
sauce and dressing, no guest who entered 
and departed ever entered the banquet-hall 
again. At the door leading into it an usher 
stood called Life ; at the door leading out one 
stood called Death, 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


147 


The feasters passed inevitably through the 
hall, after pausing at the board of Love. 
They all approached this confident and placed 
themselves : it was in leaving that their 
aspects differed. Here one sat smiling when 
the usher, Death, before he heard him com- 
ing, touched his arm. With a last toast to 
all he had so well enjoyed, and smiling still, 
he gave another place .... Here was a 
ravenous fellow who immoderately gorged 
himself, and when his time came for depart- 
ing, fought death like a mad bull. . . . 
Here sat a stainless maiden, about to begin 
the feast, who, drawn gently by the hand away, 
looked back with wistful eyes. . . . Here 
laughed a woman in her beauty’s prime, who 
left still laughing at lean age defied. . . . Here 
drooped a youth before i;ntasted foods : his 


148 


THK ARROWS OF LOVE. 


glass was empty of Hope’s wine. He rose, 
not waiting for tlie usher’s call, and opened 
for himself the door of Death. . . . Here sat 
one livid, doomed, but hungry-eyed : he tried 
each dish and wine with eager haste. Death 
was approaching. ‘‘An hour more!” he 
cried, “a minute ! Take that sated wretch 
instead of me !” — Foaming, white-lipped with 
despair, borne off by Death, his nerveless 
hands still groped .... Two lovers, drink- 
ing nectar from one loving-cup, were called 
at the same time. They loitered from their 
places and together crossed Death’s thres- 
hold, unaware, in the oblivion of a kiss. 

Eros, as host, made inquiry for the com- 
fort of his guests. 

“ It is all very well,” answered one, “ but I 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


149 


die of hunger. No matter how much I eat 
I feel famished still.'* 

For my part, I try to enjoy myself, but 
nothing piques my taste. That is another 
way of being famished." 

“Ah, you know little of true suffering! 
Now I at the first mouthful become cloyed." 

“That ill is cured by due variety — not so 
my invariable indigestion !" 

“ I like to make my whole meal off one 
dish, but before I can achieve it I am 
sated !" 

“And my taste is so blunted by sharp 
sauces that only bread and butter pleases 
me !" 

“ While I, surrounded by the rarest wines 
and foods, starve, dreaming of nectar and 
ambrosia !" 


150 


THE ARROWS OF LOVE. 


** Fools !” Eros cried. ‘‘Why will you eat 
with me ? Can you not all pass by the board ? 
Yet not one of your myriads but pauses here. 
Away, with all your hungers and your 
surfeits !*' 

The function of the God of Love as host 
was done. The hall was cloven through and 
crashed to chaos : the ushers of its distant 
doors joined hands. The hour of eternity 
was past, and past the world, the human 
race. 

At NelVs, Kenley, Surrey, 

After Midnight, October 31 , 1889 . 


FINIS. 




••• ^ 


, *' , I I ■ 

» • V . . ■ ♦ • 

'. . ■- • ^ i: •':• * 



» V 



■ ^ ' • i 




V 




. ^ 5 . 


/ 


*1.1 




n* 


■ ■ 

*/w/ 

I «. • ‘ '• • > *. 

I • * « , • 


4 . 


■STiJ * 




.»-s 


Ct-'/ 

64 ;>i ' ■ • - V * 

r A* '••..U i'M'' 



. / 




« .‘v 


* 'i ‘ ! - • * -'i^r 

.;>•;/ ‘r 




tm 





I «, 








> 




. \ 


hw 

M 

^.i-’'44 


*' V i 

.».■ 

. • • • .>' 


C< . 


fi* . M •>' • 





' i 


^ *.r. y 7 ^'>>« 


V/?':’ r-fy - "r.^; 

hW*T .. ' >* . ; kir 



i , ^ - .V,. 

J- t • • * 


>‘i ■• . • ■ ■=-. • 1^.' ■ ■• •. .'>' ti:k 


, '}: > ^ ’IPPir 

I Li .' / ^ >» 


KiV . ■ I .. . ' ' -•' >- 




' f 


rlf ■ r. 


'■'fr 

:ui-^ 

^*■‘1 'V. 


* VJ ^ ' » ' /^' ■ W /’V'r /> inf , • • ^ 


rr ' TT *-1 c* • r 

• ,VrAV’ ‘> 

Sf r ‘ 

w ' - > • 


..A. » 




rr 


■.r 


/t,vV;.n 


.-•A--;: , 



^ s 


ii‘4 '^•'<J ■ .*• .V/ 








• ' . r.yi. .:•■?' . ';> 1 


i •L. 'lA*'!' ' \ *''y *'^‘' 


►J*7 .^.^A' i t •. .• .r.' * 


1 :.V'^'' Bte; ,^Lig:m<:' LV- V"<^ 7 ’. 'l'V;v' 

!•■. 7^: ■-'•m 


'ter 

W.i . Krill J . /-l 2 r^’'.*‘ ' * O .■.>■^■■■11 n.P ,ri* 






-mr 


* .^ » ' 


» 5 


*?"■- ■-'I ■< -felts. 

//J^ZJW'#StiV> 5 BS* ' • / '? ' .-v /’'Ov. 


'i 


'• »*i 


. ■•> V 


/ » I 





f » 


1 ' aU'J^ i' ' ■• 





•I 




-ITT- ngc'|r..rv . •. 

* " - ^mi*.’: 1 -«fi ^ 




T , ‘ 1 * , / < 





v; j 

■'i y.^l 

i ' ■ 'w 



>; 
» » 
% 




j, '• 4 J. ■-,<•• ■ „ ‘ ‘i*Vi *«S®i 7 A? 




* 1 \ ' -J 


r« » 


«Ka.f3?-'iBc; ;.'*'Jti.:vrv» ' -ii- . :, 



■ . ■:rv<v/ 













